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Medical fasting is different from Islamic fasting (Sawm), and contrary to popular Muslim beliefs, Islamic fasting, unlike Medical fasting, has numerous adverse effects that have been observed using scientific studies and news sources. Intermittent and prolonged fasting is generally not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Depriving the body of water and essential nutrients by dividing and postponing meals to irregular intervals does nothing to limit consumption. In-fact it causes a host of health, performance and mood disorders. Fasting is not normally prescribed for the well being of human beings. Instead, it is commonly understood that eating healthy, smaller-portioned meals, interspersed throughout the day is far better in maintaining a well-balanced diet and far more forgiving on a person's metabolism. Any claims that prolonged and intermittent fasting contributes to the well-being of an individual's health are misleading, based on the scientific studies that prove otherwise. If the Islamic argument in favor of fasting is that “we fast because God commanded us to do so," then it is obvious that God is not a nutritionist or a dietitian because the negatives definitely outweigh the positives. So the question to the Muslim world is: what benefit does the Muslim world get for 1 billion people staying hungry throughout the day for one full month every year? Did Allah actually want Muslims to suffer physically, economically and socially for one month every year? Also, if fasting is beneficial as Muslims claim, why do Muslims not fast the entire year instead of just one month?
Medical fasting is different from Islamic fasting (Sawm), and contrary to popular Muslim beliefs, Islamic fasting, unlike Medical fasting, has numerous adverse effects that have been observed using scientific studies and news sources. Intermittent and prolonged fasting is generally not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Depriving the body of water and essential nutrients by dividing and postponing meals to irregular intervals does nothing to limit consumption. In-fact it causes a host of health, performance and mood disorders. Fasting is not normally prescribed for the well being of human beings. Instead, it is commonly understood that eating healthy, smaller-portioned meals, interspersed throughout the day is far better in maintaining a well-balanced diet and far more forgiving on a person's metabolism. Any claims that prolonged and intermittent fasting contributes to the well-being of an individual's health are misleading, based on the scientific studies that prove otherwise. If the Islamic argument in favor of fasting is that “we fast because God commanded us to do so," then it is obvious that God is not a nutritionist or a dietitian because the negatives definitely outweigh the positives. So the question to the Muslim world is: what benefit does the Muslim world get for 1 billion people staying hungry throughout the day for one full month every year? Did Allah actually want Muslims to suffer physically, economically and socially for one month every year? Also, if fasting is beneficial as Muslims claim, why do Muslims not fast the entire year instead of just one month?
===Moderate Alcohol Consumption and its Health Benefits===
{{Main|Moderate Alcohol Consumption and its Health Benefits}}
Alcohol and other intoxicants are strictly prohibited (haram) in Islam. This aspect of Islam may seem rational, considering the abuse of alcohol can lead to social and health-related problems. However, when used in moderation, research suggests that there are numerous benefits in the consumption of alcohol, and an all-knowing deity would have been aware of this. The Jews and Christians are allowed to consume alcohol. The pagan Arabs before and shortly after their conversion to Islam also consumed alcohol. So why did Allah prohibit something that may be beneficial and which was an accepted norm among the religions before Islam? Apologists will cite Qur'an 2:219 and state "In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit." However, if this was the actual reason behind its prohibition then it only reveals Allah's flawed logic. Surely an all-knowing deity would have only prohibited its abuse and not given us an outright ban. Furthermore, if the potential health risk of alcohol was the cause of the prohibition, why not also warn against the dangers of drinking milk?
===Milk is Agreeable/Good for Humans to Drink?===
{{Main|Qur'an and Milk}}
The Qur'an encourages people to drink milk and calls it "pure and agreeable to those who drink it." It is even being served in the Muslim Paradise. In reality, one glass of milk is potentially more harmful than a glass of alcoholic beverage. The Northern Europeans are among the rather small group of the totality of humankind to whom consumption of milk after the weaning stage is most 'agreeable' due to evolutionary changes. For much of the rest of humanity lactose-intolerance after the weaning stage is default.
So it seems that the Qur'anic statement "And verily in cattle (too) will ye find an instructive sign...We produce, for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it" is more appropriate to the genetic cluster of (mostly non-Muslim) Northern Europeans and their US descendants than to the other genetic clusters among humanity.


===Drinking Zamzam Water and its Health Risks===
===Drinking Zamzam Water and its Health Risks===
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As with urine, milk, and alcohol, Muslims often make claims of their religious beliefs being backed by science. However, in May 2011, a BBC investigation found that genuine Zamzam water taken from the well contained arsenic levels three times the legal limit, something which could contribute to increasing people's risk of cancer. In addition to the dangerous arsenic levels, the holy water contained high levels of nitrate and potentially harmful bacteria.
As with urine, milk, and alcohol, Muslims often make claims of their religious beliefs being backed by science. However, in May 2011, a BBC investigation found that genuine Zamzam water taken from the well contained arsenic levels three times the legal limit, something which could contribute to increasing people's risk of cancer. In addition to the dangerous arsenic levels, the holy water contained high levels of nitrate and potentially harmful bacteria.
===Health Effects of Islamic Dress‎===
{{Main|Health Effects of Islamic Dress‎}}
The majority of female Muslims worldwide, following the Islamic requirement of observing Hijab, wear some form of Islamic dress. This ranges anywhere from wearing a simple head covering, to the burqa (a form of "full hijab"), which covers almost all exposed skin.
There is concern among the medical community about some of the health effects of the extreme styles of Islamic dress, with the main issues arising from Vitamin D deficiency due to lack skin exposed to UV light. It has been established by credible scientific evidence that almost all women who observe the full hijab are chronically deficient in Vitamin D. Vitamin D is a vital nutrient and deficiency of this kind can lead to osteomalacia in adults and rickets in children. There is also a strong association between deficiency in Vitamin D and an increased risk of developing several deadly cancers, including breast cancer.
For Islam as a religion, the implications are troublesome. Islam is considered by its adherents to be the perfect way of life for mankind. If Islam was mandated by Allah, and if he wanted women to observe hijab, then logically he would not have created humans with the need to get Vitamin D from exposing their skin to the sun.


===Embryology in Islamic Scripture===
===Embryology in Islamic Scripture===
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==Islamic Science and the Golden Age==
==Islamic Science and the Golden Age==
===The Miracle of Islamic Science===
{{Main|Setting the Record Straight - The Non-Miracle of Islamic Science|l1=Setting the Record Straight: The Non-Miracle of Islamic Science}}
This is a refutation of Dr K. Ajram's “Setting the Record Straight: The Miracle of Islamic Science.” The purpose of this analysis is to put the achievements of Golden Age Muslim scientists in the proper perspective; neither denigrating their achievements nor inflating them.
All scientific and technological progress is accomplished in progression; Muslim achievements are but links in the chain. Few of the great Muslim scientific achievements stood alone, but were derived by Muslim scientists standing on the shoulders of those who came before them.
This analysis also highlights the biggest flaw of the Islamic Golden Age. There were few ‘follow-up’ breakthroughs on the backs of the works of the great Muslim scientists. In effect, the Ummah allowed or encouraged these works to wither on the vine or die stillborn, even before the rise of mysticism at the expense of rational thinking, an event often attributed to al-Ghazzali around the turn of the 12<sup>th</sup> century.
===Muslims 'Saved' the Work of Greek Philosophers from Destruction===
{{Main|Arab Transmission of the Classics}}
The “Arab transmission of the classics” is a common and persistent myth that Arabic commentators such as Avicenna and Averroes 'saved' the work of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers from destruction.  According to the myth, these works would otherwise have perished in the long European dark age between fifth and the tenth centuries.  Thus the versions of Aristotle used in the West were translations from the Arabic, which came from the South West of Europe in the reconquest of Spain from the Muslims during the twelve and thirteenth centuries.
This is incorrect.  It was actually the Byzantines in the East who saved the ancient learning of the Greeks in the original language, and the first Latin texts to be used were translation from the Greek, in the 12th century, rather than, in most cases, the Arabic, which were only used in default of these.
It is nevertheless true, and no myth, that the work of the Arabic commentators, particularly Averroes, had a profound influence on the scholastic philosophers of the Latin West in the thirteenth century.  Aristotle's Greek is terse and very difficult to understand.  The work of the Arabic commentators helped in explaining and clarifying Aristotle's dense and apparently obscure thought.  Thus Western intellectual tradition owes a great debt to the Arabic scholars in terms of ''understanding'' Aristotle's thought. In terms of the ''texts'', however, these would have survived had the Arabic commentators never existed.


===Islamic Inventions that Changed the World===
===Islamic Inventions that Changed the World===
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